Tesla aiming for cross-country speed record, but not the kind you think

It left Los Angeles early Thursday morning in two of the company's battery-powered Model S sedans en route for New York in an attempt to set the Guinness record for “the least non-driving time to cross the United States in an electric vehicle.”

Never heard of it?

Well, that’s because the category was created just a couple of weeks ago, according to a Guinness spokesperson, and ostensibly tailored to this publicity stunt.

Since Guinness doesn’t recognize any speed records on public roads, this one measures how long the cars have to spend parked to recharge as they cover the more than 3,400 miles the trip will cover, rather than the time it takes to get to NY.

But the fix is sort of in.

The team will be utilizing Tesla’s recently completed network of “superchargers” along the way, which are able to deliver enough electricity into the cars to cover 265 miles in about 75 minutes, so they shouldn’t need to be stationary more than 17 hours to complete the journey.

At least Tesla had better hope that they don’t.

While this is a yet to be established record, Guinness did set one criteria for it to be claimed: the cars can’t be stopped for more than 20 hours total.

Maybe they can use that extra three hours to do a little sightseeing along the way.